Heroes of swimming: Esther Williams

In all the world, there's only one swimmer who's been a cause of conflict between three of the world's most powerful navies. It wasn't quite battleships-at-dawn: this was more a minor-contusions sort of affair. But what it lacked in large explosions it made up for in longevity, since this conflict went on for 70 years.

It started during the second world war. In 1943, a lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy wrote a spoof note on a pin-up photo of Esther Williams: "To my own Georgie, with all my love and a passionate kiss. Esther." He placed it beside his pillow. The pin-up didn't stay there long, though, before it was kidnapped by an officer from another ship. And with that larcenous act, the Esther Williams Trophy had been born.

Soon, raiding parties of junior officers from the British, Australian and US navies were fighting for the trophy, which changed hands again and again. The raids could be boisterous: after crewmen from the aptly named USS Boxer tried to reclaim Esther for the USA, three Americans and an Australian had to be hospitalised. The original photo soon became too precious to risk, and was moved to a safe location. A "fighting copy" was made, and the ship carrying it flew signals spelling the name Esther, to show where it was held.

All this, to polish a phrase, was a long way from Kansas – which is where Esther's family came from. Having grown up on neighbouring farms, her parents had eloped in 1908. They were headed for California, so they must have been disappointed to run out of money in Salt Lake City, where they had to stop. Years later, though, their son Stanton was discovered by the famous stage actor Marjorie Rambeau, who took him to Hollywood. The Williams family followed. They had finally landed in LA – where Esther was born in 1921.

Like most top swimmers, Esther had an affinity with the water from childhood: it was difficult to keep her out of it. She was a regular at Manhattan Beach and the local pool. There, since the five cent entry fee was too much given how often she swam, Esther agreed to count the towels in return for free admission. Once in the water, she would get swimming lessons from the lifeguards – which is how she came to learn butterfly, then largely thought of as a stroke for men.

By 1939, Esther had become the star at Johnny Weissmuller's old training ground, the Los Angeles Athletic Club. She was the US's top female swimmer, the national champion, and record holder at the Blue Riband 100m freestyle. She was gearing up for the 1940 Olympics when war broke out and the Games were cancelled. Esther, deflated, needed something else to do.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the worlds of swimming and showbiz collided at Billy Rose's Aquacade. Rose was a theatre impresario and entrepreneur, and one-time owner of the Ziegfeld Follies theatre productions. The Aquacade combined swimming, music and dance into a spectacular performance. When it debuted at the New York World's Fair in 1939, it used a huge stage and pool, almost 100 metres wide, plus a 12-metre-high curtain of water. Crowds of up to 11,000 flocked to see the show, drawn partly by swimmer stars like Weissmuller, Olympic champion Eleanor Holm, Buster Crabbe, and Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel.

In 1940, the Aquacade moved to San Francisco. Eleanor Holm had left, and a new star was needed to play opposite Weissmuller. Johnny, at 1.88 metres (6ft 2in), wanted a taller co-star, and is said to have picked Esther Williams out of the line of hopefuls partly on that basis. Williams's looks hardly went unnoticed either – she claimed Weissmuller spent the next few months trying to seduce her.

It wasn't only Weissmuller who had spotted Esther's pulchritude: she'd also been seen by a scout for MGM. Within months she was signed up to a contract with the studio, and went on to make a string of successful movies in the 1940s and 1950s. They tended to be light-hearted films with titles like Bathing Beauty and Skirts Ahoy!. Her movies featured a lot of Esther in a swimsuit, and often a spectacular finale of what we'd now call synchronised swimming.

Being a Hollywood swimmer wasn't without risk, and Esther almost drowned at least twice. Once, a specially designed swimming costume proved so heavy when wet that it dragged her to the bottom of the pool. She only escaped by unzipping it and swimming back to the surface naked. (The retake broke all records for how crowded it was possible for a movie set to become.) Esther also nearly died inside an all-black water tank when she couldn't find the trapdoor to get out, and was only saved when a member of the film crew realised she hadn't emerged.

Esther's favourite among her films was Million Dollar Mermaid, a biopic of Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman – despite the fact that it nearly killed her. The final scene called for a 35-metre dive: Williams did it, but broke her neck in the process and spent the next seven months in a body cast. Although she recovered fully, she was plagued by headaches ever after.

Williams wound down her acting career in the early 1960s and went into business. She lent her name to a line of retro swimming costumes, once memorably saying: "Women worldwide are fighting a thing called gravity… You girls of 18 have until you're 25, 30 at the most, and then you have to report to me. My suits are quality fabric. I don't want you to be in two Dixie cups and a fish line."

Esther's enduring legacy is the way she encouraged people – especially women – to take to the water. She lent swimming a sense of style and fun that widened its appeal. Her films inspired the sport of synchronised swimming, and she produced a series of videos helping parents teach their children to swim. Swim, Baby, Swim showed a generation of aquatic athletes how to let go of the handrail and start paddling for the first time.

The world's most glamorous swimmer died at her LA home in June 2013, at the age of 91. Days later, the Esther Williams Trophy was retired for ever.